From increasing domain authority to ranking higher on search, backlinking is one of the easiest (but slightly tedious) ways to grow your website. Getting links back to your website is a crucial factor, with high-quality backlinks accounting for 30% of your overall page score in Google.
If you’re serious about increasing your ranking and boosting traffic, a backlink strategy is a must! While time-consuming, getting backlinks isn’t hard if you have a process in place and if you approach your link-building effort by going for relevant and meaningful linkbacks.
We’ve made the process easier by giving you a step-by-step guide to building backlinks with email. With just 4 steps, you can easily set up a scalable process to build backlinks with email.
Step 1: Grow Your Email List
Before you ask for backlinks, you need a list of people/websites to reach out to. While there are many ways to grow your email list, we’re sharing 2 solid approaches to build a qualified email list to start building your backlinks.
Target websites that link back to your competition
One of the best ways to grow your email list for backlinks is through websites that link back to your competition. Since they already intend to link back to resources similar to what you share, you’ll have an easier time getting those backlinks.
You can then use the skyscraper technique or just share a relevant blog with these websites and get a link back to your domain. You’ll read more about this in Step 4 below.
Collating these websites that link to your competition is easy. Here’s a quick way to grab their emails:
1. Go to Google and search for keywords you want to rank for.
2. Pull out the first 10 results for these keywords.
3. Use the Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker and pull out the backlink profile for each of these results.
4. List these websites in a spreadsheet for easy access.
5. You can visit each website to get the email address of their marketer or use LinkedIn to get their information. This task can be simplified using third-party tools like FindThatLead.
Identify industry leaders and websites within your field
You can also collate emails of businesses that lead your industry but aren’t direct competitors. For instance, if you are an SMS marketing solution, you can list down email marketing services, marketing blogs, and magazines, and even aggregated marketing solutions like Hubspot.
Here are 2 ways to collate these emails:
- You would already be aware of multiple solutions that are adjacent to yours. You can collate their emails through LinkedIn by using a third-party tool and scraping their information or through their website directly.
- You can also do a quick Google search to find these solutions. So, for instance, as an SMS marketing solution, you could search using terms like “marketing for small business” or “marketing for eCommerce” to find websites that match your requirements.
In both cases, you can use email address search tools like Snov.io and get access to various email finder features:
- Bulk Domain Search – use it to get a list of emails by uploading a list of domains.
- Company Profile Search – find company email addresses by specific information: name, industry, size, etc.
- Social URL Search – get emails by uploading links to professional social network profiles.
- Bulk Email Search – get email addresses in bulk by uploading a file with first name, last name, and domain or url.
- Linker – collect emails in bulk from multiple platforms by searching prospects by job title, skills, and location.
Step 2: Group and create email lists
Now that you’ve listed your emails, you can group them to plan your process for getting backlinks from them better. By grouping specific types of emails, you can easily templatize your email to these websites, keep your message personalized to that email recipient, while avoiding manual effort to identify opportunities from each of these emails.
Here are a few criteria you can use to group and create email lists:
- Group emails that link back to your competitors.
- Create an email list for websites you can guest post for.
- Build email lists for websites that publish specific kinds of content like coupons, PR news, industry news, product tips, etc.
- Group emails from websites that are industry leaders or publications for your industry.
Step 3: Generate email templates
Now that you have your email lists, you can create email templates based on the objective you have with that specific group. So, for instance, if you are reaching out to websites that link to your competitors, your email template would compliment the content piece that the website published.
When crafting these email templates for different use cases, here are a few best practices to keep in mind:
- Use the first paragraph to establish your credibility. If you have been published on top authority publications, mention that. If you have a book published in your name, mention that too.
- When asking for a backlink (whether it’s just a link back or a guest post), share why your resource would be right for the website.
- Give back! One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they ask for backlinks without offering anything in return. Share what you can give the recipient for the backlink— whether it’s a guest post or a link back to one of your content pieces.
Step 4: Choose how you want backlinks
Now that you’ve done your prep, it’s time to ask for backlinks! There are a few ways to get backlinks and you can choose how you can want to drive linkbacks to your website, based on your existing processes and your goals.
Here are 3 ways to get backlinks with email:
1. Request to guest post for them
The most effective way to get backlinks is by writing guest posts for the websites you want linkbacks from. This strategy is typically used to get linkbacks from publications and partners that you collaborate with and even from industry leaders and magazines.
You can understand if your preferred website is open to guest posts by following one of the three steps below:
- Search for the website URL on Google and add “guest posts” to the search field. If they allow guest blogging or posting, it will show up in the relevant Google search results
- You can also visit the website and scroll to the footer to look for any pages named “Guest posts” or “Submissions”.
- Many people also reach out to the marketer directly asking for a guest post. We wouldn’t suggest this method since the response rate is low and you come across as spammy.
Once you’ve identified a guest post opportunity, you can email them, pitching topics that align with the website’s content style and guidelines. Here are some best practices for pitching guest posts:
- Read through their guidelines to ensure that you send only relevant topic ideas to the website. When listing the topics, add a short blurb to describe what the content will be about and how it fits with the website’s overall style.
- Read through a few content pieces published by the website to understand their style and the kind of content they create. Is it listicle-style or more authoritative? Do they prefer formal language or are they more casual and crisp? Such questions can help you pitch topics that would get approved and write the guest post better.
2. Pick a share-worthy blog to add to their posts
If you’re looking for easy backlink tactics, something as simple as asking for a link back to one of your share-worthy content pieces like infographics or surveys should do the trick! You can ask websites to link back to any share-worthy blog within their post by following these steps:
1. Read your recipients’ blogs and find a relevant and organic place where they could link to your resource. Don’t try to force-fit a linkback where you can’t.
2. When crafting your professional email, share why your blog would be relevant within their content, whether it’s explaining a concept in detail or just helping the website support their argument better.
3. Offer a backlink in return from other sites you guest post on. You can suggest where the website can get backlinks on your articles, making it an easy transaction that they can’t say no to.
3. Beat out your competition with the skyscraper technique
One way to boost traffic to a specific content piece is by using the skyscraper technique. For this, you need to build a piece of content that is much better than anything else (as compared to your competitors and other similar content pieces). You then email websites linking to your competitor’s content piece, getting a link back to your piece (instead of your competitors).
By taking this approach, you can get a higher rank on search engines and beat out your competitor, capturing the traffic they would usually get. You can read more about the skyscraper technique.
Most marketers use the skyscraper technique to build backlinks only if their goal is to rank for specific keywords that align with their product.
Here’s how you can get backlinks from websites linking to your competitors:
1. Use the Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker and check backlinks for the content piece you are competing with.
2. List these websites in a spreadsheet. You can visit each website to get the email address of their marketer. This task can be simplified using third-party tools like FindThatLead.
3. You can now send the email to the marketer, asking them to link back to your content piece instead since it is an updated content piece and would fit better with their blog. Ensure that you tweak the email template you’ve set up to personalize it for each marketer you are reaching out to.
Boost your domain authority and increase traffic with backlinks!
Whether you’re aggressively creating content or focusing on website authority, a backlink strategy is the best way to reach your goals. The more backlinks you have, the more credibility Google finds your website to be. You’ll start ranking for your preferred keywords and drive relevant traffic to your website.
We hope this step-by-step guide helps you set up a well-planned process to build backlinks with email and grow your domain authority.